Review: Monster Turbine High-Performance In-Ear Speakers

Monster is best-known for its expensive audio and musical-instrument cables, but is also now in the business of making high-quality headphones, the most popular being the Beats by Dr. Dreline, which can be seen wrapped around the heads of many a city dweller here in NYC.

I was immediately happy with the MTHPIES’s as they completely destroyed the Klipsch IMAGE S4’s I owned previously.

Now, any pair of third-party headphones will blow away the ones supplied with an iPod. Even the lowest-priced Skull Candy models will dramatically improve your listening experience.

However, far too many modern headphone sets are entirely too bass-heavy. That isn’t a problem with the Monsters – they are incredibly well-balanced, especially after you take the time to get a good fit. With 6 different flange size options included, that shouldn’t be a problem for most people.

Strap on the headphones, and prepare to hear your music in a different way. You’ll hear the top end of vocal harmonies and guitar chords you didn’t know were there. Your whole music collection will literally sound like it was remixed for maximum quality. And if you want to crank up the volume until your ears bleed, you’ll find zero distortion here.

And most importantly, Monster stands behind their products and has awesome customer service.

To my dismay, the cord on my headphones started shorting out two weeks ago. After a painless sub-2 minute phone call, I had all the information I needed to get a replacement.

I mailed my damaged set to Monster in a padded envelope with a copy of my Amazon invoice (no original receipt or packaging required), and they promptly Fedexed a fully-boxed, factory-sealed set of new headphones back to me.

I’m praising Monster here because they just fixed my problem without giving me any BS – I really was on the phone for less than 2 minutes with them.

I did notice that Monster made a modification to the cord, making it an angled connector instead of a straight one. This should put much less stress on the headphones when they’re attached to an iPod, stuffed in a pocket.

Now we should expect this of all companies with whom we do business, but it’s just not always the case.

I once had another high-end headphone company screw me over and refuse to work with me on the repair of a pair $400 headphones (I paid less at retail) that were literally just days out of warranty. This was despite the fact that they suffered from a widely-reported manufacturing defect that killed long-term reliability. And they certainly didn’t care that I was already a repeat customer.

But nope, they wouldn’t even consider discounting the repair fee, even though the product was clearly poorly designed.

That particular company didn’t want my business, but Monster clearly does. So if you’re looking for awesome headphones backed by great customer care, look no further.